Pez Cuckow

Full Stack Web Developer

Hi, I'm Pez, a contracting full stack web developer and director of Peg Productions Limited. I have experience in a wide variety of development stacks and specialise in building MVPs for small companies, web development consultancy, and front-end web development.

I graduated from the University of Manchester with a Computer Science, Business & Management degree in 2014, having worked at Goldman Sachs in London.

While I'm not currently looking for a new contract, I'm always interested in challenging & inspiring remote positions in small companies.

Web Development

Since June 2014 I have been working as full time as a contracting web developer. I've been working in web development since 2005, and was previously freelancing part-time.

Photography

Whenever I visit an event, I often bring my camera and take lots of photographs. I keep my favourites in my 500px account.

Say Thanks

If something I've written or worked on has been useful to you, I’m delighted to have helped, please let me know! To show your appreciation in a more tangible way I’ll raise a mug to you if you put towards my next cup of tea.

In the front-end, I mainly develop in Javascript (Backbone/Ember), while on the backend I work with Ruby on Rails and PHP, but have experience in languages from Node.js, through C(++/#) to Bash and regularly apply my programming knowledge to build bespoke solutions for clients.

I'm currently traveling, as a digital nomad, around the UK, working remotely and, when I can, spending my weekends at Hackathons working in teams to build something new, while taking the opporunity to pick up exciting technologies and meet interesting people.

In my free time I enjoy trekking and camping in various places throughout the UK, I spent the summer of 2012 volunteering for the Olympic Opening Ceremony in London as a performer in the Industrial Revolution section.

Harvest provides simple time tracking, online invoicing, and powerful reporting to help small businesses simplify employee timesheets and billing. As part of Harvest's Front End Team, I've been replacing older areas of the software with API driven Backbone.js equivalents and making smaller improvements throughout the site.

A platform that allows my clients customers to collect and collate one-click email responses from their customers. I developed the platform from an existing MVC, adapting it to be available to take on a larger number of users while fleshing out the functionality and setting up support for additional email services. Additionally I build the Stripe API intergration that allows for the customers to be charged on a tiered rate, depending on their usage of the platform.

A web and responsive mobile app that assists pastors and leaders of Churches in managing their congregation. I joined the small development team as a contracor for a period of six months and built out some of the core functionality as well as the Stripe powered billing system. Additionally I expanded the continuious intergration to enable automated deploys, tests and evaluation of code quality.

While contracting for GroupVitals I helped add functionality to and release GroupForms, a lead generation product that provided a subset of GroupVitals functionality. In addition to small enhancements, I was responsible for the development and testing of the migration of GroupForms accounts to GroupVitals.

As freelance project for a private client, I built a custom web chat and added crypcocurrency casino functionality to his site. The chat itself powered by a Node.js server, which the clients connect to using WebSockets so the messages can be pushed to their browsers. It has admin functionality, supporting standard IRC functionality such as ban, kick and ipban and supports guest accounts. The user account sessions are linked directly to the websites login which is handled by PHP, so keep everything in sync.

I built pegFinance for my final year project at University. My objective was to build a web application that could tell you how much money you would spend next month and what that money would be spent on. I built a system that parses bank statements extracting the key information, performs named entity resolution to map transactions to shops and then automatically categorises the transactions. Having done this the system is able to use machine learning techniques to predict the likelyhood that you will spend money at a particular shop in a given month and to make an estimate of how much would be spent. During evaluation on unseen test user data, the system was able to correcly predict how much would be spent, with an error margin of 13.7%

Does this website count? I decided that my website needed an update following completion of my degree so set out to build something bespoke that was easy to change. The site itself is written using PHP, with Twig for the template parsing but all of the content is defined in YAML files. This makes the content particularly easy to update. When building the site I decided to optimise it's size as much as possible and if you check the source you'll find minification of the HTML, CSS and JavaScript as well as lazy loading techniques for the larger content. This in addition to the responsive design (try resizing the page!) help ensure the site is suited for mobile phones.

Details

Date 2014

Categories Web Design, Web Development

Languages Javascript, jQuery, PHP

Technologies YAML

Computer Science Project Report

"For my final year project I built a web application that can predict how much money a user will spent or receive next month, based on their historical spending patterns. As part of the project, I wrote a 15,000 word report on my application which outlines the motivation behind the project, the existing research in the area, the systems design and the implementation of that design before evaluating it's performance and suggesting future research."

Final year business report written for University investigating the effect of torrenting on the UK media industry and the effectiveness of the blocking of torrenting websites.Abstract Torrenting is used to download copyrighted works from the Internet. This report gives an overview of the technology behind it, investigating its effect on the media industry. The consequences of introducing blocking measures is reviewed from support- ing and opposing evidence. In conclusion there are four suggestions for more specific research and legislation related specifically to the UK media industry.

This website was built as a landing page for Peg Productions LLP and was used to gather business. The site itself was written completely in flash and responsive in nature, though as it used flash, was not mobile compatible, a responsive HTML/CSS alternative was built but is no longer available online.

Details

Date 2010

Categories Web Design, Web Development

Languages Flash, PHP

Yearbook Management System

The yearbook management system was created to help the yearbook committee at St Laurence School design and create the yearbook. Students from each year could log on and create their yearbook profile, upload photos and vote people for the end of year awards. Admins could then review and download all the profiles, ready for export as a yearbook as well as being able send out emails to everyone in the year.

Details

Client St Laurence School

Date 2010

Categories Web Development

Languages PHP

Client Management System

I created the Peg Productions client management system to help manage the hosting of all of our websites and clients. The system automatically issues bills for web hosting and for ordering domains and the clients can login to renew their web hosting intergrating with the PayPal API. It also helps balance the books, by organising bank statements and the assosiated transations as well as offering time tracking which could be used to bill customers.

Details

Client Peg Productions

Date 2010

Categories Web Development

Languages PHP

Maths for Mums and Dads

Created for a client who was trialing a new startup to help parents teach their children maths. The site was designed to look like a table and to be engaging for both children and adults who might be accessing it.

Details

Client Wizard Tutors

Date 2009

Categories Web Design, Web Development

Languages HTML

Aim Photography

This project was completed as part of Peg Productions, the specification was to design a brand for a new photography business and an accompanying website.

Details

Client Finishing Touch

Date 2009

Categories Web Design, Web Development

Languages HTML

Finishing Touch

Another Peg Productions project, we built a website with a custom CMS for a day spa and beauty salon. The CMS made it easy to add new products and treatments as well as update the websites content.

VCARD

Get in touch

Freelance enquiry (Hire me)

That's great, I would be glad to be of service! I can build you almost anything, from a simple one page website, a complex web application or even a website with a CMS to a bespoke Node.js application that allows you to use an Xbox controller to configure your houses lighting.

If you fill out the contact boxes below with a brief summary of what you're looking for and if possible your timescale or budget, I'll get back to you asap with a quote.